The explosive growth of the Internet has been driven to a large extent by the emergence of commercial service providers and hosting facilities, such as Internet Service Providers (ISPs), Application Service Providers (ASPs), Independent Software Vendors (ISVs), Enterprise Solution Providers (ESPs), Managed Service Providers (MSPs), and the like. Although there is no clear definition of the precise set of services provided by each of these businesses, generally these service providers and hosting facilities provide services tailored to meet some, most, or all of a customer's needs with respect to application hosting, site development, e-commerce management and server deployment in exchange for payment of setup charges and periodic fees. In the context of server deployment, for example, the fees are customarily based on the particular hardware and software configurations that a customer will specify for hosting the customer's application or website. For purposes of this invention, the term “hosted services” is intended to encompass the various types of these services provided by this spectrum of service providers and hosting facilities. For convenience, this group of service providers and hosting facilities shall be referred to collectively as Hosted Service Providers (HSPs).
Generally, there are two approaches with respect to the way in which HSPs build their server farms. One approach is to use a homogenous group of personal computer systems (hardware and software) supplied from a single manufacturer. The other approach is to use personal computer systems supplied from a number of different manufacturers. The homogenous approach affords the HSP advantages in terms of only having to support a single server platform, but at the same time it restricts the HSP to this single server platform. The heterogeneous approach using systems supplied from different manufacturers is more flexible and affords the HSP the advantage of utilizing the most appropriate server hardware and software platform for a given customer or task, but this flexibility comes at the cost of increased complexity and support challenges associated with maintaining multiple server platforms.
As HSPs increased their capacity, the number of servers in their computer room or data center also increased. To conserve on floor space in the computer room or data center, an HSP would install rack mounted cabinets to allow multiple servers to be stacked together on the same amount of floor space. Individual personal computer servers could then be stacked either vertically or horizontally in these rack mounted cabinets together with switching equipment and modems. As a further improvement on the conventional power packaging enclosure of a typical personal computer server, servers have been developed specifically for rack mounting in what are referred to as “pizza box” or “U” formats where each server slides horizontally into one or more slots in a rack mounted cabinet. Examples of homogenous servers packaged in this type of rack mounted configuration include the RaQ™ server line from Cobalt Network Systems, the Netfinity® sever line from IBM, and the A-class server line from Hewlett-Packard.
Although rack mounted servers offer a considerable improvement in terms of space efficiency as compared to conventional tower cabinet personal computer servers, installing or adding new rack mounted servers to a server farm continues to be a manual operation involving significant amounts of cabling and wire connection, as well as software and network configuration. Additionally, servicing and/or updating rack mount server configurations can involve adding or changing connections to network switch cards and/or replacing cables. As the number of computers, or servers, housed in a particular rack continues to increase, the number or wires and cables necessary to connect the servers to, for example, interface cards and network switch cards also increases. This increase in the number of wires and cables can make servicing and installing new rack hardware more cumbersome and time consuming. Thus, there is a need for rack structures that can adequately accommodate and manage the cables and wires associated with rack mount servers.
Previous rack designs attempted to minimize the wire and cable problems by employing collapsible, or flexible, cable management arms. Examples of these types of devices are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,327,139 to Champion et al., entitled “Electrical Equipment Rack Having Cable Management Arms with Flexible Linkage;” U.S. Pat. No. 6,305,556 to Mayer, entitled “Cable Management Solution for Rack-Mounted Computers;” and U.S. Pat. No. 6,435,354 to Gray et al., entitled “Cable Management Arm Assembly.” Additionally, U.S. Pat. No. 6,483,709 to Layton, entitled “Cable Management Solution for Rack Mounted Computing Components,” discloses a backplate that is fixedly coupled to a rack structure, wherein one face of the backplate can connect with the operating cables, such as, I/O devices. However, none of the above-mentioned patents solve all of the problems, such as, for example, cable management, network switch card connection and rack and/or hardware accessibility, typically associated with rack mount servers.
Additionally, U.S. Pat. No. 6,452,809 to Jackson et al., entitled “Scalable Internet Engine,” discloses a space efficient cabinet designed to accommodate a large number of commercially available server boards in a blade arrangement. More specifically, the '809 patent discloses an Internet engine in which the server blades are removably positioned in the front side of the cabinet and can connect with interface cards positioned in the back of the cabinet via a through plane. The Internet engine of the '809 patent can accommodate different types of motherboards for each server blade due to a common blade carrier structure. While the '809 patent advantageously allows for different types of commercially available motherboards to be housed and/or interchanged within the same Internet engine in a blade server arrangement, the '809 patent does not address the issues of cable management or network switch card accessibility for a blade server housing.
As the number of personal and business related websites continues to grow, the number of servers and racks employed by HSPs will also expand. Accordingly, there is a need for rack mount servers that address and solve the problems mentioned above.